A 1950s Childhood

[oldbluefox]

I must confess I'm not a great reader. Most of my reading is non fiction and I have picked up a great little read for anybody born in the 50s called "A 1950s Childhood: From Tin Baths to Bread and Dripping" by Paul Feeney.
It's an easy read and a great nostalgia trip up memory lane bring back memories of things I had long forgotten about. It's amazing how society and its attitudes have changed over the years and brings back some of the fears and hardships we suffered and how well we coped with things which would not be tolerated nowadays.
There are plenty of amusing little anecdotes too like the popularity of Archie Andrews, the ventriloquist on the radio (!!!) who didn't last long on the TV because people could see his lips move!!!
If you fancy a walk down memory lane I feel sure you would enjoy it.

[Onelife]

Hi foxy…I love reminiscing about my childhood days and as my daughter is always looking to buy dad something for Christmas, I’ll get my wife to mention it to her.

Thanks for the heads up.

[Stephen]

Argh, the old tin bath in front of the fire, I remember it well

[towny44]

Argh, the old tin bath in front of the fire, I remember it well

I think ours was zinc plated, at least it had that sort of marbled look. I remember my mum always bought Imperial leather soap, and when it wore down I used to peal the labels off and stick them onto the top edge of the bath. Incidentally in summer we bathed in the cellar where the free standing boiler was also located,

[Ray B]

Argh, the old tin bath in front of the fire, I remember it well

What are you like. You're still using it

[oldbluefox]

Argh, the old tin bath in front of the fire, I remember it well

And when they topped it up with hot water you had to sit at the end of the bath and be careful not to touch the sides as they were hot hot!! It was nice sat in the tin bath in front of the fire, warmest place in the house cos everywhere else was freezing. Fortunately I was the eldest so I got third dip in the bath.
We didn't have fancy soap. For years we had Fairy household soap. I always thought my aunt was posh cos she had a lovely smelly soap - carbolic. Even today with all these fancy soaps I still like the smell of carbolic.

[Onelife]

We were quite posh kids as far as council house tenants go…. we had a proper bath but when we ever ventured up to Denby to our Aunt Molly’s it was two kids to a galvanized bath tub. I think I’ve got a picture in one of our photo albums so if this thread continues, I’ll search it out and see if I can post it....blame Foxy

[Onelife]

Argh, the old tin bath in front of the fire, I remember it well

And when they topped it up with hot water you had to sit at the end of the bath and be careful not to touch the sides as they were hot hot!! It was nice sat in the tin bath in front of the fire, warmest place in the house cos everywhere else was freezing. Fortunately I was the eldest so I got third dip in the bath.
We didn't have fancy soap. For years we had Fairy household soap. I always thought my aunt was posh cos she had a lovely smelly soap - carbolic. Even today with all these fancy soaps I still like the smell of carbolic.

We used to have carbolic soap at our school…. if I remember correctly it was an orange/red colour and came in square blocks…. with as you say a very distinctive smell that you never forget

[oldbluefox]

We had simple things for tea but we never went hungry - boiled onions with gravy, bread and dripping, Spam. We only had toys at birthdays and Christmas and little by way of sweets, chocolate, cakes or biscuits. We usually had a cake on Sundays for tea. If aunts and uncles came to see us my mother would light the fire in the front room where the best furniture and the china cabinet were otherwise that room was saved for Christmas.

I wonder if anybody remembers, when clearly chocolate was rationed, we used to get a chocolate egg inside a decorated papier mache sort of case. At Christmas you sometimes got a chocolate tool set. The point is there was very little by way of chocolate beans in this confection so it was an awful light brown fatty substance which bore little relation to the chocolate we know nowadays but, awful though it was, it was the closest you were going to get and there was nothing else so you ate it. Yuk!!!

[Onelife]

We had simple things for tea but we never went hungry - boiled onions with gravy, bread and dripping, Spam. We only had toys at birthdays and Christmas and little by way of sweets, chocolate, cakes or biscuits. We usually had a cake on Sundays for tea. If aunts and uncles came to see us my mother would light the fire in the front room where the best furniture and the china cabinet were otherwise that room was saved for Christmas.

I wonder if anybody remembers, when clearly chocolate was rationed, we used to get a chocolate egg inside a decorated papier mache sort of case. At Christmas you sometimes got a chocolate tool set. The point is there was very little by way of chocolate beans in this confection so it was an awful light brown fatty substance which bore little relation to the chocolate we know nowadays but, awful though it was, it was the closest you were going to get and there was nothing else so you ate it. Yuk!!!

Bloody hell Foxy...I remember those chocolate tool sets

[oldbluefox]

Bloody hell Foxy...I remember those chocolate tool sets

You're going to have to get the book. Mine was £2.68 from ebay and looks brand new. Cheaper than a magazine!!!

[towny44]

One other thing I remember from my early days was that extremely sweet and strong orange juice that you could get from the clinic in small medecine bottles with cork stoppers. A taste I never forget.

[screwy]

Our Mam used to give us a spoon full of Malt out of a big Jar and a Halboliorange capsule each morning.
We were posh council estate kids too, we had a inside Bathroom and an outside Loo in the outhouse. Our small estate ,about 24 houses,built in a U shape around the village green, were built by German POW’s in 1946. One of them etched his name in the cement round the drain cover.

[screwy]

We were quite posh kids as far as council house tenants go…. we had a proper bath but when we ever ventured up to Denby to our Aunt Molly’s it was two kids to a galvanized bath tub. I think I’ve got a picture in one of our photo albums so if this thread continues, I’ll search it out and see if I can post it....blame Foxy

I used to lock people up for sharing photos of kids in the bath.....

Just saying...

[Stephen]

Argh, the old tin bath in front of the fire, I remember it well

And when they topped it up with hot water you had to sit at the end of the bath and be careful not to touch the sides as they were hot hot!! It was nice sat in the tin bath in front of the fire, warmest place in the house cos everywhere else was freezing. Fortunately I was the eldest so I got third dip in the bath.
We didn't have fancy soap. For years we had Fairy household soap. I always thought my aunt was posh cos she had a lovely smelly soap - carbolic. Even today with all these fancy soaps I still like the smell of carbolic.

You were feckin posh. Ours was outside.............near the caravan up pikey lane

[Stephen]

Argh, the old tin bath in front of the fire, I remember it well

What are you like. You're still using it

Nah, not anymore after some swine pinched it. I wouldn't have minded but I was still in it..........yesterday

[Stephen]

We were quite posh kids as far as council house tenants go…. we had a proper bath but when we ever ventured up to Denby to our Aunt Molly’s it was two kids to a galvanized bath tub. I think I’ve got a picture in one of our photo albums so if this thread continues, I’ll search it out and see if I can post it....blame Foxy

[Stephen]

We were quite posh kids as far as council house tenants go…. we had a proper bath but when we ever ventured up to Denby to our Aunt Molly’s it was two kids to a galvanized bath tub. I think I’ve got a picture in one of our photo albums so if this thread continues, I’ll search it out and see if I can post it....blame Foxy

I used to lock people up for sharing photos of kids in the bath.....

Just saying...

[oldbluefox]

I still like malt extract to this day. My little brother used to have Verol so I helped myself to some of that but I was never keen on his Farleys rusks!! I hated cod liver oil.
On Saturdays we had tripe, something I never want to experience ever again!!

[Jan Rosser]

Gosh haven't heard of Virol for years - I loved it too but hated cod liver oil off a spoon - yuck !!! I do take cod liver oil capsules plus multi vitamins now but sometimes get that after taste

We had an outside loo and a tin bath and a coal fire which burnt our legs and faces but our backs were cold - no central heating in those days. I'm convinced however that having all my own teeth is a by product of rationing - no sweets freely available.

Lots of memories not all good ones from the 40s/50s but an experience nevertheless - kids today wouldn't survive the hardship

[david63]

I can remember going with my Dad to the "Ration office" (or whatever its technical name was) to get some special ration tokens when we were going on holiday - and this would be mid 50s

[oldbluefox]

I wonder whose idea it was to put the loo at the bottom of the garden? When I was little I was afraid of the dark so I used to run like bl***y hell. Of course once there there was no light so it was a bit of a black hole with the door shut, just the spiders for company. As I got older it was my job to rip up newspaper and put string through. I thought we'd made it when we had proper loo paper.
The book talks about cold bedrooms, getting out of bed onto the cold lino in bare feet and looking out through frost patterns on the window. Anybody remember Gibbs toothpaste in a round tin like a shoe polish tin and all the family rubbed their toothbrushes in it. I think it was pink. True communal living.

[Bensham33]

One of my happiest memories was toasting bread on our coal fire using a toasting fork and having loads of dripping with it.

Another lasting memory was in the winter it was so cold that the curtains stuck to the window in the morning. Something that we kids found very amusing.

[Onelife]

For a special treat, ‘when mom wasn’t around’ me and my sister used to raid the black treacle tin…loved it!

[oldbluefox]

One of my happiest memories was toasting bread on our coal fire using a toasting fork and having loads of dripping with it.

Another lasting memory was in the winter it was so cold that the curtains stuck to the window in the morning. Something that we kids found very amusing.

We just used an ordinary fork but didn't the toast taste great. Did your parents use a large sheet of newspaper to draw the fire when they lit it and sometimes that caught fire too!!!? As Jan says you used to stand close to the fire to get warm (made your skin go sort of dappled) but your backside was perished. In front of the fire was a progged mat with little burnt holes in it where sparks had shot out and singed it.